About Reading Vet
Reading Vet is aimed at providing you with trustable recommendations of vets in and around reading. More than just a listing, we endeavor that reading vet provides you enough information for you to make an informed decision, through video testimonials to short bios. Because we know how important your pet is.
Reading now has a selection of vets practices serving both domestic animals and livestock, but as with human medicine, the developments in veterinary medicine that have led to veterinary surgeries begin available to all pet owners and farmers have been relatively recent. Traditional veterinary medicine has, however, been practiced in many forms since people first began to domesticate animals.
Animals were once treated with the same sorts of traditional remedies that people used on themselves. In more recent times, farmers and farriers or blacksmiths would have provided some medical care to livestock, but they relied on their own experience and inherited knowledge rather than science.
It was not until the 18th century that modern veterinary medicine began. In 1791, the Veterinary College, later to become the Royal Veterinary College, was founded in London. It was the first such college in the UK. The Army hired its first qualified vet in 1796, and vets practices began to spring up around the country. Clinics that provided care to animals whose owners could not afford fees were also being established by the 19th century, and charities such as the Blue Cross (founded as Our Dumb Friends’ League in 1897) and the PDSA (founded in 1917) were set up to help provide veterinary care in the UK.
In Reading, professional veterinary services have been available since at least the 19th century, ensuring that the animals of Berkshire received the best veterinary care. During the Second World War, the Royal Veterinary College actually moved out of London and into Berkshire, at Streatley, near Reading.
Today, there are many different vets practices in Reading, including Castle Vets, one of the oldest in the town, the Abbey Veterinary Group that serves horses and farm animals as well as pets, and the Abbey Veterinary Group.
